Handling racism: What do you tell your children?

Monday

How do you talk to you children about handling racist comments? Local experts have some suggestions.

You’re at the grocery store. A man bumps the woman in front of you with his cart. She turns around and utters a racial slur. Your 7-year-old hears it.

What do you do? Do you intervene? Or do you walk away and say nothing?

Don’t ignore the situation, experts say.

“Silence is acceptance,” said Michael Douglas of Diversity Initiative, a consultant for North Canton City Schools. “They give passive approval by not saying anything.”

As a parent, you need to act quickly. The longer you wait to talk to your child about the offensive comment, the harder it could be to repair the damage later.

Especially for young kids, says Dan Lowmiller, principal at Allen Elementary School in Canton.

“Kids have a hard time coming back to a situation,” Lowmiller said. “They feel that (emotion) right away and see that their mother is upset. If appropriate, talk about it right then so the child understands. ... Otherwise, there’s a disconnect.”

WHAT TO SAY?

Douglas suggests parents focus their message on what they value and find acceptable and unacceptable.

“Tell them, ‘I do not agree with that statement, and that is not who we are,’” said Douglas, a former Summit County teacher. “Kids should be engaged in a way that is age appropriate and in plain language that the child can understand.”

When confronting an offensive relative, Wendy Fragasse, a counselor at Edison Junior High School in the Perry Local district, said a parent can ask the family member to refrain from using the derogatory language around their children or threaten to stop visiting them.

A better option though, Fragasse said, may be to tell the child, “That is a part of (them) I do not agree with. It’s repressive. It’s not acceptable.”

“Students are going to encounter all walks of life and belief systems, so the notion of removing them from hearing any comments may not be feasible,” Fragasse said.

PREPARE YOUR CHILD

School psychologist Teresa Golden-McClelland suggests that parents take inventory of the diversity in their lives: Who are your friends? Who do you invite over to the house?

“The more you isolate yourself, the harder it is for kids to understand that not everyone is the same,” Golden-McClelland said. “The key to life is balance. If they are in school with white kids all day, attain balance by participating in a diverse group.”

Golden-McClelland suggests introducing diverse materials to children as babies and reading them books that show positive role models from other cultures.

She believes talking to children about race should be as natural as conversations about Dora the Explorer, Gossip Girl or Halo 3. Parents of minority children should focus on building their child’s self esteem so they identify their culture as something to celebrate and not something to hide, she said.

“Parents shouldn’t wait for a teachable moment to talk to their kids about race,” says Golden-McClelland, who works with four elementary schools in Canton City Schools. “In order to eliminate negative attitudes, we need to deal with it head on.”

Diversity expert Douglas still hears questions at the high school level about why black colleges and the Miss Black America pageants exist. He says parents need to connect the history of race in America to discussions they have with their teens about diversity.

“Kids are very book smart, and they know things on an intellectual level,” Douglas said. “It’s more of the realistic-in-the-world level they don’t have a handle on.”

He saw the question resurface during the inauguration of America’s first biracial president.

“I was absolutely blown away. I thought, ‘My goodness, we are still fielding the same questions we were 20 years ago,’ ” Douglas said.

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